An article in today’s Times-Standard says Humboldt is seeing a spike of first-time gardeners hoping to augment their food supply in these tough times.
The article questions how much people actually save given the cost of establishing and maintaining a vegetable garden.
But one claim stood out: according to Tom Parker of A&L Feed and Garden Supply in McKinleyville, an acre of space can produce enough food to feed a family of six for a year.
Is that true?
During one of the many discussions on this blog about turning Humboldt County into a rash of mini-farms so we can all live the “rural lifestyle,” there was heated discussion about this very topic. Without being able to locate those comments, it seems the dominant argument was contrary to the above claim.
Perhaps the legion of home gardeners who read this blog can help us out here. A family of six with one acre? Really? And if it’s true, are you stuck with a diet of potatoes and, well, potatoes?
Just wondering what that water bill might be?
You can feed hundreds of people on one acre if you build skyward.
If they legalize pot maybe a few locals could try hydroponic potato gardens. Mmmmm…try this summer crop!
There was one point missing in the article: there have been illnesses and deaths related to food poisoning from contaminated produce sold on the marketplace (salmonella and e-coli). This may be a factor for people that want to give their families the best and freshest food possible.
I think it’s doable. Potatoes are certainly good. But with raised beds for the potatoes, string beans, etc., a small greenhouse for tomatoes and cantaloupe and whatnot, you could do LOTS of things. On the north side of the greenhouse you could do cold weather plants, like sugar snap peas, broccoli and spinach and lettuce and kale. You could put up some teepee-type lattice/stakes for beans in the sunny part. A fruit tree or four. The only thing you’d miss is grain, which it seems like you’ll always have to buy, and meat. And if your neighbor uses her acre for a couple of cows or sheep, then you could barter. It’s the dream all of us old back to the land hippies used to have. Then the lure of modern habits and consumer goods addiction cemented us into jobs and indoor lives that made all that seem far away.
But again, it’s still eminently doable.
In a warmer climate, a few degrees of latitude South, I used to do a quarter-acre garden in an old cattle pen (GREAT soil there, thanks to the former tenants of that pen), shared the work and produce with my neighbors, and fed two families (four adults, two kids) that way. Not entirely, but largely. We also had goats and chickens and rabbits.
If you follow recommended serving sizes for meals, you can feed a family using one acre. Keep in mind that restaurant meals are usually much more food than you are supposed to eat at one sitting, and we tend to over-stuff ourselves at home, too.
Ah, “starving the beast” is finally working.
Using the French intensive method as described in “Square Foot Gardening,” you could provide all the vegetables for a family in just part of your backyard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_foot_gardening
I think we’d have to do a year long study to see if this is possible. I do have potatoes planted in my garden in Eureka, along with onions, carrots, squash, and cucumbers. I grow lots of tomatoes in my greenhouse, along with peppers, peas, and bean starts. But if the real economic famine hits, I can always find some potatoes and onions to make a tasty soup for survival. In any case, diversify your garden throughout the year with seasonally appropriate veggies, but canning your veggies in the summer always helps.
If you can handle the predators, one can raise poultry for eggs and meat. One could have a goat or cow for milk. Homegrown free-range turkey is superior. The poultry can roam the gardens and eat bugs. But be wary of predators. I have lost flocks by predators. And like with fishing, I have lost interest in killing animals for food. Also there have been foxes, raccoons, skunks, mountain lions, and bears in our neigborhood.
One could always barter or trade their produce with their friends and neighbors. Like I would trade your bushel of potatoes for a bushel of apples.
It depends on how you garden. I grow an amazing amount of food in just 1,600 square feet of raised beds, and when increased soon to 4,000 square feet which I am doing I will be supplying some of the extra to Food For People.
In addition to the raised beds I use the “square foot” gardening method.
Is is cost effective? Probably not dramatically, but I know where my food comes from, it is organic, and of course fresh.
But there are lots of ways to garden in a small space, particularly with the square foot method, and homeowners can grow a lot of food in the “flower beds” in their back yard.
An acre planted in this manner would be more than you could manage. You can grow a huge amount of food in a small amount of space if you use the right techniques.
Carol, have you seen the movable chicken yards with completely secure hen houses? The person I know with one has never lost a single chicken to predators and they live in an area with lots of raccoons and other chicken killing predators. Raccoons are everywhere, even downtown.
Plain Jane posted while I was typing my message and provided the link to Square Foot Gardening. I highly recommend this book.
No, I have not seen the movable chicken yards, Plain Jane. Do you have a link?
I agree, Ron. The book is excellent. Additionally, gardening using this method greatly reduces water waste and the beds are easily covered to extend the growing season.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Moveable-Chicken-Coops—A-Chicken-House-on-Wheels&id=478583
Another idea I read about years ago was a “moat” type chicken yard where the chicken yard surrounds your garden area. The chickens are allowed into the garden area for a while before planting to eat bugs and grubs (they can be hard on the plants) and then confined to the moat around the garden where they do a pretty good job of keeping the pests that get into your garden to a minimum.
Oh, I should add since the link doesn’t include this. My friend attached a bottomless yard to his movable chicken coop that also had wheels so that the whole thing moved as a unit. His was small and could be moved by a single person, but I have heard of larger ones that are moved using tractors or pickups. Chickens will strip the ground of every blade of grass so moving them regularly will distribute their fertilizer, protect the greenery while having the benefits of “free range.”
Too frippin funny for words…
Yeah, let all of the lucky no-growthers who have their rural land tell those that WANT rural land (as opposed to ghetto er, um in-fill, that living out there is and growing one’s own food is too dangerous because of salmonella and predators.
Carol can kiss my ass
So sad, Ms. Jones, that you are functionally illiterate and didn’t understand that Carol was talking about salmonella and e. coli in produce from the market, not home gardens.
On a literal level your answer is, you bet. The Irish quadrupled their population in less than 200 years by adopting ‘Irish gardens,’ potato patches that were scarcely even hoed or weeded, on the marginal land the English couldn’t be bothered to exploit, with large families living off of fractions of an acre. Until the potato blight.
So this isn’t entirely yummy. Permaculture can achieve hugely more diversity on somewhat more land using raised beds, complementary plantings, expensive inputs and indentured students etc. Biodynamics goes further by conceiving each household as an ideally closed, self-sustaining system, so the waste from animals becomes the fertilizer for ag that feeds the animals and family that cycle back their poop. This really can work with enough variety and attention–but forget about earning a living in your spare time. (Though it does create wonderful local wines and foods.) And don’t forget, if you can’t store nature’s bounty with canning, freezing and root-cellar temperature storage, and continue to cultivate some of it year-round, you’ll still come up short.
Truth is, it’s a full-time challenge to live truly independently in less than ideal conditions like ours (we grow trees and ungulates best here, not crops). But living towards this ideal is a wonderful way to learn lots more than you thought you knew you didn’t know.
A good person to talk with on this subject is Paul (he owns Warren Creek Farms)Guintoli.
He’s been growing potatoes for a very long time. Numerous varieties too.
Just a thought…
I don’t know where you got the idea of me being a “no-growther”.
Your question reminds me of one of SoHum’s poetic plenitudes: abandoned subsistence farms on meadow edges everywhere, wasted down to broken-limbed old rotted apple trees, and maybe a native-stone fireplace, some trickle of water nearby.
You see why they settled here immediately. Why they left creeps up on you, as you rub your back in sympathy.
It’s possible, if it’s year round, and it’s heavily dependent upon your ability to can, dry, and pickle fresh veggies and fruit and to otherwise store fruit and roots. Keeping the vitamin content is a challenge, cooking and canning kills much of the vitaim value. Fermentation is another vital skill, sauerkraut or kim chee are excellent sources of vitamin c in the winter months. Freezing keeps more vitamins, but limited time until freezer burn. I have a small freezer, but my off-grid electric can’t support a chest freezer anyway.
I grow food year round, in winter it’s long season onions and garlic that go in in November and come out in June, nitrogen fixing fava beans, and greens like kale and chard that resist frost, and lettuces under a cold frame. Spring and fall are peas and beets and summer is everything else. Protein is a challenge since I don’t keep animals. I don’t have the heat I need at my altitude for most shell beans, but I can grow quinoa, a tasty high protein seed, which tolerates cool nights and needs very little water. I have a half acre garden and several fruit trees. My goal is to add chickens and up to another half acre of raised beds. I’m working out a trade with a neighbor who has a hotter garden just downhill to take on the cool tolerant things here while she does the squash, cukes, and beans.
Deer, quail, mice, and wild turkey are my biggest predators. Mice especially a problem in storage. The cats take care of the mice but usuallly ignore the quail and want nothing to do with turkeys. I’ve been told that if you have chickens, your cats will be second choice to the mountain lions and bobcat.
I recommend “Stocking Up” from Rodale, it has great advice on improvising root cellars, how to store fruits and cheeses, how to can, dry, ferment, and other useful storage and cooking practices. Their receipes are quite good, but I usually reduce their sugar by half, or substitute honey.
Better get a 4 or 5 hundred thousand dollar headwaters grant to research the talking heads of our many foodie groups to see if it might be feasible to do another 2 or 3 year study to see if a acre of potatoes or blueberries might feed a family of six. That could be the subject for another great headwaters grant. This could go on and on. and people say these blogs are silly1
Also check out http://www.gersondiet.com (spelling?).
We produce more than we can eat in our small gardens but the health benefits far out-weigh the costs.
The Gerson Institutes have been curing cancer patients through a diet of juiced garden vegetables and fruits since the 1940′s. A documentary video explains the benefits of juicing live greens. It takes a lot of greens and carrots to make juice.
Many in Eureka will find that if they dig a 4 foot wide hole, 4 feet deep, they can pump all the water they need for the garden into a tank.
Depending on the size of your garden, you can save $50 a month on the gym as well!
Yeah, the positive side to this horrific and preventable economic downturn is that individuals will be forced to get off their asses, if they want to survive. Surviving meaning actually working for their food and basic necessities to living. This could be good for American’s as a whole.
Yes, food self-sufficiency can be achieved, and there are many folks around here who are close to doing it. But most people don’t want to do that much work, and we’re all used to the luxury of getting such a variety of exotic foods and out-of-season fresh produce from elsewhere. And as someone mentioned above, grains are where you’ll come up short with a small garden plot.
But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t continue to strive towards that ideal of self-sufficiency. It’s not an all-or-nothing question, or at least it shouldn’t be. Every bit of locally-grown food displaces the need for some food that would otherwise be trucked in from out of the area.
While some folks would like to portray all rural development in Humboldt as being either all about pot-growing, or all about “converting resource lands to trophy homes,” that is far from the whole truth. Anyone who spends a significant amount of time in rural Humboldt (as I do) knows that there are a LOT of folks who are producing tons of good, healthy foods on lands that were previously underutilized with just cattle grazing as part of a huge ranch.
Yes, there can be negative impacts involved in the homesteading lifestyle, but most, if not all of them can be avoided with good rural stewardship and appropriate technology, such as composting toilets, greywater recycling, proper graveling of dirt roads and good culverts, and winter water storage.
Unfortunately, the county (and the state) actively discourage many of these helpful practices, with rules that make no sense for rural areas. To those who are trying to work toward the ideal of greater local food self-sufficiency, it seems that government is often creating more and more barriers to sustainability rather than removing them.
It also seems that some folks around here have decided that “rural” is supposed to mean 10,000+ acre ranches under absentee landlords, with pasture land leased to absentee ranchers. Breaking up these huge ranches, which were consolidated from old homestead parcels, especially during the Great Depression, is portrayed as greed-based “development” that takes land “out of ag production.”
What these folks don’t seem to grasp is that having a homesteading family living on the land and actively developing it’s agricultural potential by storing winter water, amending soils, making raised beds, planting orchards and vineyards, raising poultry, etc, can actually *increase* the amount of agricultural productivity of many of these homestead parcels.
re: “…rash of mini-farms so we can all live the rural lifestyle…”
I don’t think anyone’s suggesting that we ALL can live the rural lifestyle, but rather that the relatively small number of folks who actually want to do the hard work of creating a small working farm should be *encouraged* to do so, not discouraged with nonsensical septic codes, etc. We should be working to change those rules to not only allow, but encourage, good stewardship of our rural lands.
Most people have no interest in the back-breaking labor involved in a working farm, most people want to be close to services and amenities that are available in towns and cities. That’s one reason that farms in America have become more and more consolidated and mechanized, with resulting impacts that are quite destructive both socially and ecologically. A little more decentralization would be a good thing, from my point of view.
Skippy’s right: I’m not about to spend all my free time trying to raise food to feed myself, it’s to much work. You don’t really expect me to raise a cow so I can have milk in my coffee and butter on my bread. (And who’s going to grow coffee beans in Humboldt anyway?) We’ve evolved a trade system that makes it so we don’t have to grow everything for ourselves.
Returning to the original question posed in this thread: Is it true that an acre of space can produce enough food to feed a family of six for a year? Probably, but that’s likely a made-up stat, something repeated and accepted as fact without empirical data.
This Canadian site did the math and came up with a figure of just 1/10 acre per person, so an acre for 6 may not be an exaggeration.
But as this AlterNet writer points out, “Turning Your Lawn into a Victory Garden Won’t Save You” and it won’t fix the basic problems with our food system.
“To repair the broken system that supplies the bulk of the nation’s diet will require Americans to step out of the garden and into the public arena. Beyond working to get a better Farm Bill, we have to work together to break the political choke-hold that agribusiness has on federal and state governments. With land and wealth being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands (and with more prisoners than farmers in today’s America) we have actually reached a point at which land reform is as necessary here as it is in any nation of Latin America or Asia.”
D’oh! As I’m out working I realize I gave the impression I’m doing it. No way. I’m getting about 1/4 of my food out of my effort in a good year. It’s my intention to get to half, but in incremental increases.
Of course if the apocalypse comes, I’ll get right to it.
D’oh! As I’m out working I realize I gave the impression I’m doing it. Sorry to be so lame, I was undercaffinated. No way. I’m getting about 1/4 of my food out of my effort in a good year. It’s my intention to get to half, but in incremental increases.
Of course if the apocalypse comes, I’ll get right to it.
Here are some goals that many of us here in Humboldt share:
Yes to in-fill and clustered housing for the many folks who want to live in an urban type environment.
Yes to new family farms/homesteads on our rural lands for the relatively small number who are willing to do the hard work.
But no to suburban sprawl and to rich folks who want to live in remote areas but live the urban/suburban lifestyle with twice-daily car trips to town.
And no to the big-time sloppy diesel dopers who pollute our precious waterways and attract violence to our rural communities.
I think many people would agree with these goals. The tricky part is how to achieve these goals without “throwing out the baby with the bathwater.”
but always something about “rich folks”, who most people here wish they were but will keep hating in the meantime…
I couldn’t agree more, Skippy, on every particular. I’d say you’ve expressed the general informed opinion on rural issues, and would add that watershed awareness and conservation are daily becoming bigger features of rural thinking.
It’s a terrible shame that the county has no interest in working positively with its rural citizens, we would have fewer worries about babies or bathwater if it did.
Heraldo, yeah it can be done. It’s pretty well covered in the above comments.
If you’ve perfected the “Grow Biointensive” method developed and trademarked by Ecology Action, they claim you can feed a family of four with 1200 sq feet of raised beds. A book by John Jeavons, called “How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits” pretty much outlines the method from top to bottom.
I find it highly plausible with a bit of training and practice.
Of course if you plan to get incorporate animal husbandry, more food/space is required. I have found milking (and meat) goats to be an invaluable addition to any homestead.
For people interested in this slow foods (as opposed to fast food) movement, I highly recommend the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. There are a lot of locals getting into making their own cheeses, growing their own meat and produce and looking within the local community to either buy or trade for their goods for their family. This is great when you can stick to it in terms of just eating locally, but there are certain times during the year that you have to resign yourself to branch out because like Crocodile Dundee said “you can live on it but it tastes like sh&*.” I mean there are certain times of year when a few non-local fruits and vegetables are just what the doctor ordered. A bit of a warning though… for those of you who have a love for turkey (lunch meat is my particular weakness): it may take awhile before you can bring yourself to eat it again after reading this book! Even nearly a year and a half after reading it though, I still find myself shopping at the co-op and Farmer’s Markets for produce because their signage tells you where your food comes from. For some reason even Eureka Natural Foods refuses to post signage for where (which farm, state and/or country) their foods are grown. If you think about your personal (or family’s) fossil fuel footprint on the planet, it makes sense to choose local or at least central California or Southern Oregon when you can. This year, for the first time since I was a kid, we have a large garden and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the process, the time with my family and the fruits of our labor.
Oh, I get it now, the starving and oppressed people in this country are just a bunch of lazy bums sitting around on their “…asses.”
By the way, most people already work for food.
When I was very young we raised rabbits, chickens, ducks and a lot of vegetables in a regular neighborhood as we all had kind of large lots and some of us shared with others that had fruit trees. We all fished the rivers too. Never thought about anyone controlling what we did as we all did the same thing.
I don’t think the County would allow me to have rabbits, chickens or ducks where I live even though it is a half acre and I could easily support those along with vegetables and if the neighbors did the same thing they certainly would not complain either. Code Enforcement might show up and consider it neighborhood blight or something worse and fine me to clear up the problem.
Had to laugh when reading 5-31 at 12:26 p.m. post re Headwaters grant money. That is similar to what one of the proposed grants is about but it is not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Good idea to get Headwaters grant.
Maybe some of us that live on only a half acre in a neighborhood could get together and see if we could get a Headwaters grant to be able to have chickens, etc. on our properties for food production and we could claim we are also starting a “fertilizer plant”.
Not intending to make fun of others growing food and I do think there are lots of possibilities with a greenhouse and a even small area to grow vegetables in your yard but though I have tried to grow some vegetables in my yard something eats them as soon as they come up and I don’t want to use pesticides so I guess I will continue to buy at farmers markets and support the economy.
That is an EXCELLENT book, Ann J-S, by my all-time favorite novelist. Their year of eating only locally produced food (with a few exceptions for the locally unobtainable and necessary for them) was very thought provoking. Other really good books about the provenance of food are Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Second Nature.
It is surprising what you don’t know Heraldo. When people are talking about the rural lifestyle, this is what many of them are talking about, growing their own food and raising animals. Wow.
You mean most rural people in Humboldt are feeding families of 6 on single acres? Wow. Learn something every day.
For 10:09
You should check with the city / county on what “livestock” they will allow. There are lots of people living inside the Eureka city limits with rabbits and chickens, even some sheep and goats. So long as you don’t have a rooster waking up all the neighbors and keep it clean, no one should care.
No, I actually meant what I wrote. I am surprised you didn’t know that you CAN feed a family on an acre. I am surprised you didn’t know that when MANY people describe a rural lifestyle, they are talking about growing their own food and raising animals.
I am a little surprised you spun that around into “most rural people in Humboldt are feeding families of 6 on single acres”. How quaint of you.
No need to put words in my mouth. The particular question was about feeding a family of 6 on one acre.
Certainly growing ones own food is a value or goal that some rural people have. Whether they are pulling off this amount is another story.
This has been an interesting thread. Based on the responses I’m guessing you are not achieving the quantity questioned above.
Apparently you’ve never tried growing hydrotatoes. They are the bomb diggity. The only problem is you don’t get that sprayed with blue-baby syndrome pesticide taste.
Get “seed” potatoes at a nursery or farmer’s market because these conventional store bought potatoes are often treated to retard sprouting. Organic edible potatoes sprout fine, but sometimes these have have a latent viral/fungal infection. Yukon gold is a good choice for variety as they are compact and have a uniform shape.
Hydroponic fertilization of potatoes is cheap. That said, cannabis-oriented nutrient formulas (e.g. “Lucas”) are useless for hydroponic potatoes. What you want is to swap between shoot and root growth as if this was some sort of a plant physiology experiment. Hit the seed with a nitrogen-rich grow formula until the shoot is about two feet tall. After this, switch to a rooting formula which will halt vertical growth and kick in your tubers. No need for “Super OG Bud Blast,” flowering hormones, or any crap like that as flowers are not the object.
The simplest method is to use 5 or 8 gallon “air pots” which are simple black plastic pots with holes all throughout the sides. For medium, do not use anything which holds moisture as you will be letting them fully drain with each feeding. It is not necessary to drain to waste if you elevate the pots above a collection trough and re-use the fertilizer. You can drain to waste if you like.
Aeroponic potatoes are ideal if you plan on have multiple plants. Whatever you do, do not run the sprayers constantly as it will slow tuber growth. Aeroponic potatoes take longer to get to shoot maturity but produce much larger potatoes as there is no resistance.
The chief advantage of hydrotatoes is you can reach into the medium (with gloves of course) and pull off multiple pounds of potatoes. Under normal circumstances, if you pull a couple of lbs from an 8-gallon potato site, it will need a week to grow another couple of lbs.
To anyone who thinks this won’t taste as good as your musty old compost potatoes, the expensive bagged fancy potatoes in commercial grocery stores are hydrotatoes.
Perhaps one acre is not enough for a diet heavy in meat, milk and bourgeoisie fodder. You must realize that in order to have an animal worthy of murdering, a good deal of space and effort goes into keeping that animal healthy. Those who raise animals for food consider each beast to be uniquely valuable.
People are not raising a single acre of food and then feeding their family steak every day. However, the concept that one acre (or 43,560 square feet) is not enough space to grow tons of food is laughable and makes you sound very green.
I must be in the minority of people who fail grow all my own food on a single acre.
Evidently. How are you dividing your acre up? What is your crop sequence? What are your soil’s pH, EC, and micronutrient figures?
The most common methods of rejuvenating soil around here are using gypsum and vermiculture. Have you tried these?
“…all my own food on a single acre”
Again, it’s not an all-or-nothing situation. If some lands and horticultural methods require 4 or 5 acres to produce enough food to support a family, that’s still a very valuable addition to our local self-sufficiency and food security.
And if someone raises 10% or 25% or 50% of their own food in their garden (of whatever size), that’s a whole lot better than zero.
Whatever the specific numbers, from my point of view, the advent of a “rash of mini-farms” would not necessarily be a bad thing.
Perhaps I’m misreading the spin of the original post, but it sure SEEMS like you’re implying that unless everyone grows 100% of the food for their family on a single acre, then a “rash of mini-farms” would be a bad thing. This is a false dilemma.
No need to put words in my mouth. The particular question was about feeding a family of 6 on one acre.
let me refresh your memory:
But one claim stood out: according to Tom Parker of A&L Feed and Garden Supply in McKinleyville, an acre of space can produce enough food to feed a family of six for a year.
Is that true?
i take that to mean: is it true an acre of space can produce enough food…?
yes, it can. no, you don’t have to just eat potatoes. i doubt very much that people are totally living off their 1 acre gardens but the point is they are supplying a portion of their own food and any amount that doesn’t get trucked in from mexico is better, isn’t it?
Silly 421, obviously it’s an all or nothing question: Either everyone can raise 100% of their food on one acre and never eat anything else, or else the advent of “rash of mini-farms” in Humboldt is tantamount to suburban sprawl converting resource lands to residential. Get it now?
Not possible, unless it’s cabbage and potatoes. Without butter. Or oil.
All one has to do is observe what groceries your family buys and consumes regularly and what percentage of that is vegetables. Coffee? Juice? Sugar? Grains and breads, pasta, rice? Fruits?
What are you eating in late spring when winter’s stores are gone and spring’s haven’t hardly sprouted yet?
Srsly, just look at your groceries and wonder if you could do without or how you would make.
And a cow or goat for milk, butter and cheese? Not without hay or grain and certainly not on one acre. In the winter.
So since (according to Maria, at least) we can’t raise all of the foods we are accustomed to having in a one acre garden, therefore should we oppose a “rash or mini-farms” in Humboldt? (I love the choice of the word “rash,” why not go even further and call it an “infestation” of mini-farms?)
The fact is, Heraldo, you didn’t ask the 1 acre question in a vacuum, you asked it specifically in relation to the land-use issue that you characterized as “a rash of mini-farms,” implying that there was a connection between your question and the desirability of the “rash of mini-farms.” (By the way, a 160 acre homestead parcel isn’t what most people would call “mini.”)
Its interesting to read how defensive people get when real lifestyles are described. It’s clear that rural living in Humboldt isn’t anywhere near self sufficient but requires significant inputs from the “industrial economy”.
I don’t think its surprising or shocking, its just a fact. But for those who would “justify” the impacts of their lifestyle by its “self sufficiency”, I guess its an inconvenient truth.
Its even more clear that no one is willing to rely on their casual gardening efforts as a method of sustenance and accept starvation if their crop fails to produce enough.
Its not even certain that after adding in all the inputs to small scale food growing on a casual basis that it uses fewer resources than large scale food production.
And its certainly not clear that its less costly from a pocketbook point of view. I’ve seen no one show a detailed and complete computation of the expenses and results for what they have grown. Most backyard gardeners joke about the cost of their produce, acknowledging it would be cheaper to buy it. But for them its not about cost, and its certainly not about food for survival.
Local profitable farm businesses specialize to increase crop productivity. The profits from specialized crops auguments the owner’s diet with items they don’t produce.
The world average is about 0.5 acre of cultivated land per capita. In China its 0.25. Currently in the US, about 1.8 acres of cultivated land and 2.3 acres of pasture is used per person. Non-food uses like ethanol and net food exports probably reduce those numbers as far as what goes into the mouths of the population. But thats mostly from very productive Midwest lands and SoCal irrigated lands with multiple crops per year. Most HumCo land isn’t nearly as productive. Thats why the settlers drained marshes and diked wetlands, to create arable land. The idea of even one person per acre in HumCo rural lands with US living standards is unrealistic.
If you’re interested in guessing your ecological “footprint”, check out this calculator. I don’t know how accurate it is but using it and putting in the most minimal consumption(no car, electricity, or running water), I got a footprint of 11.4 acres. There may be better calculators out there.
Yes, let’s all support more “large-scale agriculture,” i.e. factory farms, feedlots, heavy use of pesticides, GMO crops, mechanization, agribusiness, concentration of ownership/manoralism.
Clearly unless every homestead family raises 100% of their own food, “accepts starvation” if crops fail and never adds any outside inputs then homesteads are worthless from an agricultural point of view.
So let’s all get small-lot houses clustered on the edge of a golf-course and drive our Priuses to the store for our imported mass-produced foods. That’s real sustainability. An internet calculator told me so.
“…one person per acre…”
How about 4 people on a 160 acre homestead parcel with a 2 acre garden, 40 acres of pasture, and the rest in reserve? ‘Cuz that’s more reflective of the actual reality of rural Humboldt living…
Oh wait, I forgot, if you can’t raise enough food on one acre for a family of six without any other inputs, then you’re not self-sufficient at all. All or nothing, all or nothing, all or nothing…keep chanting the mantra and eventually it’ll be true…right?
Nobody actually needs coffee. Juice can be made from fruit and fruit can be grown on trees.
If you are implying that whole grains are difficult to grow, don’t be silly. Nobody needs refined grains. I suppose they do if they want to maintain their 300lbs body, but otherwise bread and pasta are just government subsidized gluttony.
Squash.
This all depends on a person’s diet. I guess the real question is can the average person feed 6 people a fat American slob diet with one acre of land?
There is some business I saw advertised in the NCJ for people who will come to your land and plant food for you. This sounds like a good thing for the perpetual greenhorns to try.
You’re the one who’s chanting. Have you found God yet?
Care to make a lucid point?
“Self- sufficient” is just that, and yes, it’s all or nothing. If you’re not, then you’re not.
“Self reliant” is a more accurate term, as unless you live in a cave and trap animals ( no bullets, remember)and wild forage, you aren’t really self sufficient.
I believed in the myth of self sufficiency until I tried to do it; first of all I needed nails. Immediately I realized it was a myth.
I once made raviolis completely from home grown products. I grew the wheat, tomatoes, garlic, onions, basil, cheese ( goats milk) eggs, and guess what? I still needed salt and oil. Oh and the whole process took me days, not counting the whole “growing the stuff” time. I won’t try that again any time soon..
Anybody care to explain how “economies of scale” apply to one-acre farms?
For NAN, you can grow potatoes in a plastic garbage bag with a little soil, adding straw as the plant grows. You can harvest potatoes continuously if you do it carefully. I prefer new potatoes to larger, “old” potatoes with hard skins so harvesting started earlier. This also enables you to change the location outside to lengthen the growing season with different varieties to almost all year without any lights or systems.
http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/gr_fruits_vegetables/article/0,2029,DIY_13846_4463475,00.html
Check out this potato box.
Sure Jane I’ve grown potatoes here. But they can’t be “harvested” continually because they don’t grow in Winter. But if enough have grown in Summer, are stored and luckily don’t rot, they can be be eaten continually.
But back to the question asked here. How many can you grow on how large a property with how much input of other things(including labor) to provide the needs of how many humans at a “decent standard” of living? And finally, how many people in HumCo are doing it for all their food and for how long?
As someone earlier noted, there’s reasons for all the local former farm properties and those who don’t learn history are destined to repeat it.
I respect maria’s effort and her clarity. I wonder if she figured out if the food she produced provided the calories she needed to make the efforts as well as for her other essential activities of daily living?
The potato blight that starved millions of Irish people from 1845-48 was not the only potato blight in history.
A potato blight in the 1880s (or thereabouts) hit the Arcata Bottoms (and surrounding areas), wiping out the entire potato crop. Until then, potatoes had grown lushly in the coastal climate. They had been an important part of Humboldt County’s agricultural output.
Take from history what lessons you may.
Yeesh. You want all-or-nothing, I’ll give you all-or-nothing: “Il faut cultiver notre jardin.”
That’s Voltaire. The sum of human experience in “Candide” is, good God, we’ve got to cultivate our gardens. Try it, you’ll see. It was easy to lose touch with reality already two centuries ago.
Maria, you’re not a failure because you bought salt. Don’t go all NAN over it, just enjoy your garden. Who wants to grow rice and beans if you don’t have to?
NAN, I only know well two households that really do live off their own labors. Neither of them can get on line, not that they care that we’re poorer without them. Both keep goats and chickens, and their gardens are under an acre. But they’re strapped for gas money.
So how come my Cheerios don’t come up? I plant them in good soil, and nada.
So according to maria (4:06) you can’t be 50% self-sufficient, because she defines self-sufficiency as 100%? Okay, I’m fine with the term self-reliant, though it isn’t clear why self-sufficient has to be 100% but self-reliance can be partial. But, whatever, let’s use the term you prefer, self-reliance.
If more people are 50% or 75% self-reliant for their food production, isn’t that still a good thing for our local food security? Seems to me that it is, whether it takes one acre or three.
Or is it now the “progressive” position that only large commercial agribusiness with “economies of scale” are sustainable and desirable?
If so, we seem to have very different ideas of what “progress” is.
By the way, if you replace the perjorative phrase “a rash of mini-farms” with the more recognizable terminology “family farms” is it still a bad thing?
What’s a “mini-farm” anyway? 5 acres? 40? Anything less than the 600 acre ag minimums proposed in GPU Alternative A?
And why the obsession with whether a family of 6 can raise ALL their own food on a single acre? Is that the kind of “mini-farms” we’re plagued with? In other words, what’s the point of the original post, if not to present a false dichotomy where you either have to raise 100% of all your food on a single acre, or else not have a small farm at all?
I’d like to see a move toward more community gardens, especially for us apartment folk who don’t have space to do any real gardening.
Larry at Neighborhood Farms and Garden Service at (707) 499-2994 or GrowMyFood@gmail.com
There is a community farm if you live in N. Hum.
http://www.arcatacsa.com/
I agree that there is a need for more community gardens. So many able-bodied people, so little pruning going on. This would be good for people’s health and spirits. Perhaps some could even learn something to help them cultivate food in their dark apartments. Mushrooms are a good start… better than just growing mold.
My only point is that if someone says they’re actually “producing their own food”, and its not a hobby or feel-good project for the kids, then they’d better be creating more food than what is consumed to assemble the material inputs(costs) they are using to make it happen.
To a first degree, that can be represented by the per unit costs of production. And if they barter for some things, then the costs of those things to whoever made them need to be included too.
And if they’re using human labor, it had better be labor that is supported in a way that passes the “decent standard of living” sniff test.
I’m not saying anyone has to produce ALL their own food to claim a degree of self reliance. But if they’re ignoring inputs and externalizing costs, they can’t say they are producing anything, they’re actually consuming. I’d say that’s what the terms mini-farm or gentleman’s farm refer to.
And for me, I’d just be happy to see a basic accounting of the activities and not even get into things like sustainability, which the general economy hasn’t accounted for either.
BTW, some cite Thomas Jefferson as a personification of the noble American yeoman farmer tradition. farmer. His plantation Monticello was never successful, his wife’s inherited money kept it going. And he had slave labor to boot.
By the time someone accounts for all of their inputs, they are usually producing more than they consume. It’s not keeping track that leads to the $20/lbs tomatoes.
in conclusion, industrial farming is the only way to go. so says the progressive community. interesting.
They just suck at growing things and thus are haters.
It sounds like you assume that any enterprise that is productive has to be “industrial”. That’s your bias. You throw the buzzword “industrial” around like the neocons throw “evil” around. But it shows a lack of willingness to critically consider how human food reliably comes about and instead create fantasy bogeymen you can absolutely loathe.
In a recent NCJ, Jacques Neukom said he’s having a hard time leasing contiguous land in Willow Creek to farm. He’s trying to farm more land to be more efficient and presumably make more income. I’d guess you’ll say that if he is able to sustain his methods and practices over the long term, he must be “industrial”. Well, so be it. I wish him and others all the best.
Rodale started with magazine articles and books on 1-acre family farms. Amazon.com must have oodles of Rodale publications from the early days, shortly after World War II, when millions of American soldiers were returning from Europe and the Pacific Theatre. Those early publications were reprinted and distributed widely during the 1970s back-to-the-land movement. I first saw them at North Town Books in Arcata. They included a lot of valuable information on how to run such a farm including how to avoid the pitfalls new homesteaders often fail to recognize.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture also produced a series of pamphlets during the 1930s and 1940s on how to run small family-sized eggs farms and goat farms. Fascinating reading. HSU students can probably still find them in the U.S. Documents section of the HSU Library.
NAN, you talking about family farmers and gardeners ignoring inputs is a joke when compared to the external costs of industrial farming. aside from the fuel consumed to ship and truck many products from mexico and south america, how about the burden of illegal immigrant healthcare here, the worker abuses, and loss of rainforests for this cheap food we enjoy? those don’t show up on the financial statement and comparing those costs to somebody not accounting for their labor or the cost of their fencing materials is ridiculous.
i am not against industrial farms, we would starve right now without them and i hope the guy in willow creek becomes very successful, but the two don’t need to be mutually exclusive.
i find it ironic the progressive community would be against local family farms, therefore pushing the burden of food production elsewhere while the rainforest action network and other environmental groups are pushing to save their local family farms. i guess you guys forgot about the “think globally” part?
NAN just wants to take all the fun out of raising veggies by obsfucating the issue with semantics. Just plant the fucking seeds and water them. Jeez. And hope the deer don’t eat your beans.
“I’m not saying anyone has to produce ALL their own food to claim a degree of self reliance.”
Thank you for acknowledging that.
“But if they’re ignoring inputs and externalizing costs, they can’t say they are producing anything, they’re actually consuming.”
Great. But by that standard, it seems to me that modern, mainstream industrial agribusinesses are net “consumers.”
Huge quantities of topsoil are being consumed (poisoned and eroded), petroleum fuel, chemical fertilizer and pesticide inputs are consumed. And many costs are externalized, such as the effects of fertilizer runoff, pollution where the pesticides are produced (like “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana, etc.), foreign wars waged to guarantee petroleum access, underpaid and uninsured migratory farm workers, and the many other “hidden costs” of the centralized, mechanized, chemi-industrialized farm model.
I’m all for recognizing the inputs and externalities of farming. But we would have to look at the inputs and externalities of large-scale agriculture as well as small-scale. I would be interested in any objective studies that may have been done that really make a fair cradle-to-grave comparison between the different types of farming. Does anyone know of any such study?
I’m going to start calling 55 gallon drums full of R.O. water “industrial-strength micro-irrigation solution storage tanks.” A bucket of Bacillus thuringiensis is now the “industry-standard biological Brassica pest eradication system.” My overalls and straw hat are going to be the “extra-dermal cosmic radiation shield.” Heavy gauge steel wire fabric is now the “industrial Thomomys exclusion barrier.” I can’t forget my biodegradable photosynthetic minimization system for the weeds.
You know you are jealous of my brand new industrial farm.
Wow, I’m impressed by the volume of comments about this. Very impressed indeed! All I wanted to say is that I supplement a family of 4 with fresh produce all season long on 1/4 acre, of which less than 150 SF is used for gardening. A friend has 1,200 SF of garden space and they haven’t bought produce in a decade. 1,200 SF is very doable on one acre.
I also am impressed with this discussion, which must be viewed through the context of the other discussion on this blog which rail against anyone who wants larger lots, which will allow for this level of independence. So is the word sprawl used to describe those who have land but do not garden?
The idea that 43,560 square is plenty enough space to grow a ton of food scares those opposed to subdividing parcels. The idea that this is not enough space to feed a family of six is an argument for living in a downtown apartment or something. This argument is anti-growth for rural Humboldt.
As sinfonian2 points out, intensive agriculture can produce impressive results in as little as one average-sized garden bed. If someone actually planted out an entire acre using square foot gardening techniques, we’d be talking in terms of how many tons of surplus there were per season, not how many people it would feed.
Thanks A Non A Me, I was missing the point entirely.
Aside from subdividing, which is a separate issue, this discussion also bears on the issue of whether people will continue to be allowed to build a house on existing rural parcels in Humboldt. My understanding is that Option A would make these permits discretionary on the part of Planning staff, rather than ministerial (automatically allowed as long as all rules are followed).
Clearer rules (even if more restrictive) is a better idea than increased staff discretion, which creates a dynamic that can foster favoritism, cronyism, good-ol-boyism and the reality that wealthier individuals and developers with ample funds for an extended administrative and legal fight are favored by a system heavy on staff discretion rather than clear and predictable rules.
The idea that mainstream agriculture probably isn’t sustainable doeen’t necessarily make a backyard one acre garden any more sustainable. From the comments here of people who’ve done it, it seems that its not. And its especially not if it being attempted to provide someone with a “decent American standard of living”.
The humanitarian need here is 300 million Americans who require food each and every day to continue. And the legacy of a gardener who finds they aren’t productive enough and has “moved on” to other activities is just another subdivided exurb residential commuter abode that has low sustainability and high environmental impact.
the legacy of a gardener who finds they aren’t productive enough and has “moved on” to other activities is just another subdivided exurb residential commuter abode that has low sustainability and high environmental impact.
you just make stuff up, don’t you?
This anti-grow your own food stuff is making me more sympathetic to people who want to put houses on rural parcels. Seems like a bunch of greenhorns trying to tell people they can’t have their homestead. Y’all would do better not framing the issue like this.
Ahem. Who is doing the framing here? It was only through this thread that I learned that I am totally against family gardens unless they provide 100% of the residents’ nutrition.
I promise to barf up each and every home grown tomato later this summer.
I’ll take them… unless they are the tomacco variety, you can keep those.
Thank you for your sensitive offer, Heraldo, but that’s okay. You know, it’s abstract categories that get us in trouble, again and again. Concrete experience is what dissolves them into perspective.
On our homestead we don’t try to be self-sufficient, though we do grow a ‘ton’ of food. I have no idea how much, I don’t care, it tastes good and makes us feel good and gives us zucchinis to use as a medium of exchange and good humor, as interchangeable icons of abundance.
But I realize the crazy aspect of this discussion is the same crazy-maker I suffer from in creating, storing and using all our own energy off-grid. Our household isn’t 100 percent energy self-sufficient, which gripes the hell out of me. We’re better than 95 percent there, which isn’t too shabby, but the clouded-over fall days before the rains come when the winds don’t blow still require an occasional dose of back-up generator power. I hate this. It makes me feel like a hypocrite and a failure. However, if I went for 100 percent independence I’d spend a lot more money on infrastructure I don’t need (and couldn’t pay for) the other 11 months of the year. Do you see where this is headed?
Accepting natural limitations and acquiring a sense of proportion is another gift of learning to live lightly. It may be abstract thinking that inspires some of us to live on the land, but as we pay attention once here, we’re healing from thinking, with feeling.
I do hope the healing spreads. That’s why it’s so important to me that our good fortune in living on the land not be denied to others due to someone’s abstract principle. We learn much more from correcting behavior than from banning it, which doesn’t work, and doesn’t learn. Our failing is that we’ve neglected learning together.
Heraldo,
With all due respect it was your original post that combined the question of whether a family of 6 could raise all of their food on a single acre with the land-use issue you characterized as “a rash of mini-farms.” It’s not exactly a stretch to infer that you might be trying to make a connection between those issues.
But I’m glad to hear that you’re not against people raising their own food, even if it’s not 100% of what they eat.
Here’s the real question: in your vision for Humboldt County’s future, is it O.K. to start a new family farm and build afarmhouse on a 20 or 40 or 160 acre parcel, or should there be 600 acre ag minimums, as Option A of the General Plan Update calls for?